As teams geared up to face off in the NCAA Men’s Basketball tourney this weekend, one of the teams hoping to pull an upset on March Madness was Murray State.  Only two days in teams like Saint Mary’s and Ohio were among a handful of teams knocking off high seeded teams and Murray State hoped to follow that.

Just to get this point in the season, the team’s head coach Billy Kennedy uses his gifts to set the tone of leadership through out the season.  In the locker room before each game, he championed his players with the mindset of Power, Love and Sound Choice. These 3 points can play into your own marriage in the same way that it helped lead to success in the Murray State athletics.

1. Power

Having power in your marriage is not power over your spouse but in using the power of you and your spouse as a team to make hard decisions. These are the decisions to choose to love your spouse, to hold up boundaries that help your team grow strong; keeping out things that destroy relationships. Also, the power to raise your kids together, manage your money together and invest into your marriage TOGETHER!

2. Love

This is easy in what it means but not in how we do it. The reminder here is the showing of love, in actions, not just saying it. If your actions and eyes are empty, the words mean nothing. Like a basketball team in a must win situation, your marriage is a must win opportunity by showing love in ways that matter; listening, cherishing and honoring your spouse.

3. Sound Choices

In the same way that Coach Kennedy used this to encourage his team to keep their focus and calm head no matter the stress, this same mantra plays into your marriages.  Life will distract you from your spouse and stress will cause you to loose your cool but thats when you stay in-check with your spouse.  Throwing your arms around each other to love each other through those moments when life or your spouse can be unlovable. (Especially when you have no words.) It takes open communication to be able to make sound choices. It takes having a playbook plan for what’s coming in your marriage in order to make the shots count.

The Marriage Playbook

~where marriage is going~

My wife said to me, after becoming a stay-at-home mom with our first daughter, “I feel guilty if I take time or money for myself.” I thought about that and tried to see where she was coming from.

See I handle the checkbook (we decide on the budget together), and my job takes me out of the house. She feels bad about speaking up and asking to budget in money for her. She feels as if she’s taking away from the baby or from savings or debt payments. She was also with the baby all day at the time. Even when the baby takes a nap she has to use that time to do chores that she can’t get done otherwise.

For my wife and maybe for most moms, whether you are a stay-at-home mom or not, taking time out for yourself is hard. Even though I leave to go to work most days, I still get out and away from the norm of what stand-up comedian Gallagher calls “baby day.” It’s when everything revolves around the baby. Shop before the morning nap, do laundry while the baby naps, go to the library before the afternoon nap, clean the kitchen while the baby naps, and so on. The cycle puts my wife, and maybe you, too, if you are a mother, into a pattern that creates little to no time for her.

If you make a to-do list, do you create time in your day for yourself? Would you?

In an age when computers and Smartphones rule our lives, we forget about one of the most important things of the day, Personal Priority Time (PPT).

I’ve seen and heard of people actually being hospitalized because they took no time for themselves. Between breakfast, work, kids, soccer practice and games, dinner, homework, housework, and bedtime, there was no time for them.

Now before I continue, making time for yourself actually just reinforces a Whatever it takes attitude. If you do whatever it takes to be at your best for your family, your job, and your friends, your personal time helps you do that. Personal time lets you de-stress, relax, or maybe have some fun. I love to play video games as a way to have some PPT.

If you neglect yourself, how can you possible have the mindset or the physical ability to do what you want to do or need to do daily? You’ll just simply burn out!

If you go back all the way to the beginning of time, even God took the seventh day to rest. We should follow that example. Now, allotting a whole day may be hard for you, and that’s okay. Just make your PPT a part of the to-do list. God loved us enough to create us and to breathe life into us every day. We need just a little time to get back our focus.

My wife now takes the time right after the girls go to bed to sit on the computer and email, instant message with her friends, or play games. This allowed her to unwind before she has to clean house or take a bath or go to bed. Sometime she’ll even call me and say she’s going straight to bed, and if she doesn’t ask me to clean up when I get I home, I’ll tell her that I will so she can rest.

Her personal time may not be as much as she’d like, but for most of us it never is. Who wouldn’t like to come back from vacation and have the boss say, “Take another week”?

Now start making yourself a priority.

The Marriage Playbook

~where marriage is going~